Barcelona president explains why Lionel Messi is leaving the club | OneFootball

Barcelona shocked the world on Thursday evening by announcing that Lionel Messi would be leaving the club.

President Joan Laporta has been holding a press conference on Friday to discuss the Argentine’s stunning departure. Here’s what he had to say.

How it came to Messi leaving Barcelona

“The situation we inherited was dreadful.

“We don’t have any margin for error in terms of salary. The rules and regulations of LaLiga is regulated by Financial Fair Play and we don’t have any margin. We knew that when we got to the club.

“The numbers that were presented to us when we first concluded our audit are a lot worse than we were exposed to initially.

“That means that the losses are a lot more elevated than we had expected and what we are spending is a lot more than we expected.

“This is all tied to fair play. That’s why we couldn’t fit in the first contract that we had agreed with Leo Messi.

“The first agreement was that we would pay two years of salary over five years and Leo was okay with that.

“But after LaLiga technically analysed it they deemed that this would not fit their criteria.”

On the financial situation of the club

“In order to have fair play, Barça had to agree to an operation that meant that it would affect the club for the next 50 years in terms of TV rights.

“That has meant that we had to make the decision, I can’t make one that will do that.

“The club is over 100 years old and is above everyone and everything, even above the best player in the world.

“We will always thank him for everything that he has done for us, the club goes over coaches, presidents and players.”

“The reasons why we have decided to get to this point of negotiations is that there are objective reasons regarding the economic situation of the club.

“The salary limit we had was four to one. So to bring in 25 million of salary we had to release another 100 million.

“We’ve been negotiating for the last few months. He is the best player in the world and he has other offers of course. There comes a moment where we have to say enough, analyse it rigorously with a cold head and look at the numbers.

“This is after a calamitous situation down to the previous board of administrators.”

On Messi’s legacy

“Leo wanted to stay at Barça, we wanted him to stay.

“Leo deserves everything, he’s proven that he loves Barcelona.

“A new era starts now. There will be a before and after Leo.

“We wanted to pay homage to him, properly, with the fans in the stands but due to COVID it is sad that we can’t do this.”

Could Messi still resign for Barcelona?

“I don’t want to generate false hope.

“During the course of negotiations we have known that he has had other offers, there was a time limit for us and him, because he needs time to evaluate his situation.

“We had an agreement with Leo but we couldn’t formalise it.

“He was always present in negotiations and tried to make it easy for us.”

On the salary limit

“Everyone is working on the situation and now we have a bit more margin to see if we can find a solution.

“But we are at the limit, even without Leo.

“We are over the salary limit without the contract of Leo Messi.

“LaLiga has to abide by the rules, LaLiga wants Lionel Messi in the league, of course they do.

“But there are clubs in the league that want the rules to be abided by, they didn’t ask us for anything, they just asked us to abide by the rules.

“They just asked us to abide by the salary limit that is already allowed. That’s as simple as it is.”

On being able to register the new signings

“Regarding our calculations – yes. We can inscribe them.

“If we had inscribed the salary of Messi, that is obviously different to the salaries we’re talking about now.

“There have been a certain amount of circumstances that have allowed us to put these salaries within the limit.”